The invention relates to electronic devices, and, more particularly, to resonant tunneling devices and systems.
The continual demand for enhanced transistor and integrated circuit performance has resulted in improvements in existing devices, such as silicon bipolar and CMOS transistors and gallium arsenide MESFETs, and also in the introduction of new device types and materials. In particular, scaling down device sizes to enhance high frequency performance leads to observable quantum mechanical effects such as carrier tunneling through potential barriers. This led to development of alternative device structures such as resonant tunneling diodes and resonant tunneling hot electron transistors which take advantage of such tunneling phenomena.
Resonant tunneling diodes are two terminal devices with conduction carriers tunneling through potential barriers to yield current-voltage curves with portions exhibiting negative differential resistance. Recall that the original Esaki diode had interband tunneling (e.g., from conduction band to valence band) in a heavily doped PN junction diode. An alternative resonant tunneling diode structure relies on resonant tunneling through a quantum well in a single band; see FIG. 1 which illustrates a AlGaAs/GaAs quantum well. Further, Mars et al., Reproducible Growth and Application of AlAs/GaAs Double Barrier Resonant Tunneling Diodes, 11 J.Vac.Sci.Tech.B 965 (1993), and Ozbay et al, 110-GHz Monolithic Resonant-Tunneling-Diode Trigger Circuit, 12 IEEE Elec.Dev.Lett. 480 (1991), each use two AlAs tunneling barriers imbedded in a GaAs structure to form a quantum well resonant tunneling diode. The quantum well may be 4.5 nm thick with 1.7 nm thick tunneling barriers. FIG. 2 illustrates current-voltage behavior at room temperature. Note that such resonant tunneling "diodes" are symmetrical. With the bias shown in FIG. 3a, a discrete electron level (bottom edge of a subband) in the quantum well aligns with the cathode conduction band edge, so electron tunneling readily occurs and the current is large. Contrarily, with the bias shown in FIG. 3b the cathode conduction band aligns between quantum well levels and suppresses tunneling, and the current is small.
Attempts to fabricate quantum wells in silicon-based semiconductors, rather than the III-V semiconductors such as AlGaAs and GaAs, have focussed primarily on silicon-germanium alloys for heterojunctions. More recently, use of very thin silicon oxide tunneling barriers has been investigated. Tsu, U.S. Pat. No. 5,216,262, describes a silicon-based quantum well structure with tunneling barriers made of short period silicon/silicon dioxide superlattices of epitaxial silicon dioxide two monolayers thick.
Application of resonant tunneling diodes to memory devices has been limited.